We used to celebrate the Feast of Thankfulness over here too, but Cromwell put pay to all that. But it was violent, and crazed, so I’m kinda okay with it.

Still, in solidarity with our US brethren – or to spoil their whole day for them, depending on how you view stories featuring creepy little kids – Clarion have kindly allowed me to post up Thankless, my Thanksgiving story from Season of the Macabre, free and gratis for the next 24 hours or so.

 It’s not cruel or kind. It’s just food. You gotta start understanding that. It’s all food. Food for him, food for us, food for the worms. That’s how she turns, this ol’ world.

You can read it in the stories section, or jump straight to it from this link.

Share it with anyone you think appreciates the dark meat.

As well as giving Season of the Macabre a glowing review, the nice folks at UpComing4Me.com are giving a copy of the paperback away here.

Just send an e-mail with the subject line SEASON to info@upcoming4 .me

Also, a tweet or Facebook post related to the giveaway will each give you an additional entry –  send them an e-mail with a link to the tweet or Facebook entry.

The closing date for the competition is September 2nd, so get a goddamn move on!

So, here it is, the new cover for Season of the Macabre, as revealed by Clarion this morning.

Read more →

Kim at The Caffeinated Diva features a guest post from yours truly today on what makes for good horror writing: losing.

To write horror, you have to find your own mechanism of fear. You have to know how you want to be hurt, but also find a way to give everyone the same opportunity to be hurt in their own way. The very best (worst?) horror fills unwritten gaps.

Head over and read it now.

Podcasts! Huzzah!

I got clued into a site called Audioboo (Boo! How much do I love that?) this week and have moved to put two of the stories from Season of the Macabre up there for you to enjoy. However, I know how bone idle you are as well, so I’ve also embedded them here for your convenience.

Don’t be expecting anything for Christmas now, though.

The morning post brings the new paperbacks.

They stalk in, shedding their packaging before they’ve even crossed the hall, and stretch themselves all over the leather, basking in the sun like so many literary cats.

Sexy on the outside; evil on the inside.

I think I’m in love.

All the social media sites.

It’s part and parcel of the visibility you’re expected to maintain as a new writer these days, that your ass be plastered across dozens of social media sites, blogs, pinboards and digital back alleys. These beasts tend to rise from the murk, thick with muck of birth, and we swarm them like so many black flies. We eat them, lay in them and fly on to the next one, leaving our maggots to hollow them out.

I’m a little weary of the process—you might have picked that up.

Today, as part of the hollow-and-move-on part of the life-cycle, I deleted one such long abandoned journal. I’d dropped to maybe a single post a year, and we’d been done for a long time. Most of my friends had already jumped ship and my communities were elsewhere so, like JMS at the end of Babylon 5, I assploded the whole damn thing. Or so it seemed.

I’d been writing in it since 2004: my homes were in it, my daughter was born in it, I’d roamed the world in it. Letting it all fall out of memory was hard.

So I saved a day.

The post is from Monday, June 23rd, 2008, but it’s about the day before, the 22nd. A busy Sunday with lots of driving and high emotions for all of us. We’d been in Donegal a little over a year and a half, and my son was five, almost six. Writing had taken a back seat to degree studies in English Language and Literature and we were still just finding our feet in our new home.

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So, by now everyone who cares knows that Christopher Priest hates the 2012 Arthur C Clarke shortlist; hates the judges’ perceived incompetence, hates China Miéville’s laziness and really doesn’t care for Charles Stross pissing on his intellectual carpet. For his own part, Priest has worked on wording his objections in such a way that their provocativeness ensures the man himself can be accused of neither a lazy response or of merely taking the piss. Read more →

So, I won the inaugural Octocon Short Story Competition last year, to have a story appear alongside the likes of CE Murphy, RF Long, Alan Nolan, Oisín McGann, Peadar Ó Guilín and Derek Gunn.

Well, the ebook is out and you can get it for free at the Octocon site now.

The story is my first foray into science(ish) fiction, and is called Intervention Paradox. It’s a wacky tale of Bohmian mechanics and, really - what kid doesn’t love Bohmian mechanics?

So, please go get it and give it – and all the other excellent stories from the professionals – a go. I’d love to heart what people think of it.